Stale Beer and Cigarettes
by spiderfire
Summary: Four days after the battle over the Potomac, Bucky meets a stranger in the bar. They have more in common than he can possibly understand.


It was very late and there were only a dozen or so patrons left in the dimly lit bar. One of them was a man who wore gloves indoors and had a baseball cap pulled down low over his shaggy hair. He was sitting hunched, glowering at the table in front of him. The table was deeply grooved with decades of graffiti. He idly traced "M.H. + S.L." and "1998. Fuck it all" with a gloved finger.

There was nothing about this place that was familiar except the smell. The bar reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. He did not know why, but the smell was calming, somehow.

The barkeep put a shot glass in front of him and filled it with vodka. He liked that the vodka in this bar was cold enough to make his teeth ache, to send a shooting pain up between his eyes that subsided as the alcohol burned its way down his throat.

He let the sensations wash over him, hoping it would dull the siren call in his mind. Report. I must report in. Where? He was not sure. Somewhere south of here. He had been making his way north for the last four days. Four days since he had failed in his mission. Four days since he had ….Steve…. No. His metal hand closed around the empty shot glass and abruptly the glass shattered. The barkeep looked at him sharply. "You okay?"

Consciously, he released the shards and looked curiously at the glove. It had been sliced open across the thumb and the metal hand showed through.

No. He would not think of what had happened in those…those…he had no words for where the fight had taken place. He had not worried about that, then. He had had a target, a mission and that was all that mattered. Now…

It was late and he was afraid to go to sleep. This morning he had woken on a bus headed southward. Like so many holes in his mind, he had no memory of getting on the bus. Report, his mind nagged him. You are loyal. It is your duty. He was so tired. Report. And when the debrief was over, there would be rest, of a sort. Oblivion.

"Why engage hand to hand?"

He jumped. No one should be able to get so close without him noticing. He palmed a knife from somewhere.

The man who slid onto the stool next to him was clean cut and ordinary in every way, except how he moved. He held his weight over the balls of his feet and there was an economy of his movement that was instantly recognizable. This man was dangerous. Every bit as dangerous as he was.

He sat up straighter, watching the man warily.

"I mean," the other man said conversationally, "if Captain America had been my target, I would have used a .338 Lapua Magnum and sat on the top of a building a mile away."

He shook his head slowly. Captain America. Yes, Captain America had been his mission and he had failed to complete it. He should report in. He started to stand, to head to the door. He must report in.

The other man put his hand lightly on his arm. His real arm, not the metal one, and he froze, his eyes boring into the other man. There was dangerous stillness between them. In a moment, it could erupt.

"Sit," the other man said softly. "You would not be here if that was what you wanted."

What he wanted. What a strange concept. He looked at the other man's hand on his arm and the other man removed it. He lowered himself back onto his stool and he watched the other man with cautious eyes.

It occurred to him, now that he was long overdue, now that he had not reported in, it was only a matter of time before he became the target, another's mission. This man could be the first. They would take him back, he was sure. His fingers tightened on the knife blade but he did not move.

"This a vacation, or are you going to stay off the grid?"

The question did not make sense. He shook his head. He looked down at the shards that were left of his shot glass and he longed for another. The blinding pain between his eyes, the burning down his throat. At least that made sense.

The hair on the temples of the other man was shot with grey. He had no grey hairs, he knew. He had studied the face that stared back at him out of the mirror.

A thought popped in his head. I was born in 1917.

His thoughts had been in Russian. That thought had come to him in English.

The other man said, "They'll be coming for you, you know."

He should go. He was a loyal agent.

The other man waved at the barkeep. Promptly the broken glass was gone and two more glasses were plunked down in front of them. Glasses of vodka that instantly were covered with condensation. The other man tossed the drink back.

"I was CIA," the other man said, switching to Russian spoken with a perfect Moscow accent. "You are KGB?"

He looked at the drink suspiciously. This was not right. He should not be drinking with the enemy.

KGB. No, that was not quite right.

Looking at this man, he remembered another clean cut man wearing the browns of an Army officer's uniform. The bar they were in only shared the smell with this one. Stale beer and cigarettes. A negro played the piano in the corner. It was a warm place, a place with friends. He had been a part of something. A soldier in the US Army.

Such thoughts confused him. He looked away from the other man and stared at the glass of vodka. He wondered if it was still cold enough to drink. As the drink was burning its way down his throat, when he could distract the part of his mind that usually guided him, he said it.

"Я…" The other man had spoken in Russian and he began answering in kind. The vowel chasing the vodka down his throat tasted wrong. When the rest of the words slipped out, it was not until after he had spoken them that he realized that he had switched to English. "I do not know."

There. It was said.

The other man nodded and waved at the barkeep for another drink. After he downed it, he said, "I went up against you once. In Sochi. We had the same target. Do you remember?"

He looked at the other man again, trying to discern something familiar in his features. But there was nothing. He shook his head.

"You got the kill," the other man said. "My boss was not pleased." The other man looked down at the shot glass in his hand and fiddled with it. "It is funny. That was one of my first missions as…well…you do not need to know the name of the project. It is over now. I was twenty-seven then. Now, I've gone grey. Even at my best, I doubt I could have gone toe to toe with Captain America." The other man shook his head. "They must have you on some good stuff. You might want to think about the withdrawal if you go off cold turkey. We were warned about that."

What was he talking about? He looked at the glass in front of him and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he got up.

The other man looked at him. "It is late. Do you have a place to go?"

A place? No. "Yes," he said.

The other man nodded, his face cracking a bit of a smile. "I know that yes." The other man picked up a napkin from the bar and scrawled something on it before holding it out. "I'm Jason, by the way."

He took the napkin and looked at it. There were a bunch of numbers written on it. Some code he supposed. He looked back at the other man. "I…" he started, "I am…" He realized he did not know the rest. Stuffing the napkin in his pocket, he walked away.


End file.
